Spike Lee never had a chance. That’s been clear since April, when the bile burst forth in response to the title of his new movie: Chi-Raq. A portmanteau of “Chicago” and “Iraq,” the term unfavorably compares shooting deaths in this city with those of Americans serving in Iraq. It originated with drill, a menacing, nihilistic, and violent hip-hop sound that rocketed from Chicago’s south side to rap’s hilltop a few years ago. In 2014 Noisey, a music site created by Vice, the alternative media empire valued in the low billions, launched a dreadful eight-part Web documentary on Chicago hip-hop and gun violence called Chiraq.
Lysistrata is finally moved to act after happening upon police tape and the sheet-draped body of a young girl struck by a stray bullet. At the behest of Miss Helen, Lysistrata researches Leymah Gbowee, cofounder of the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, which helped end the country’s 2003 civil war with a series of nonviolent protests that included, yes, a sex strike. Lysistrata decides to unite the Spartan and Trojan women behind this idea. In no time they take control of a National Guard armory from Major King Kong (David Patrick Kelly), a white Confederate sympathizer with a fetish for black women. All the while Samuel L. Jackson’s Dolmedes serves as the finely dressed, foul-mouthed Greek chorus. He drinks from a chalice brandished with his name and can freeze time and summon extras to help fill in the story’s gaps with playful rhymes.
Directed by Spike Lee
